Hello, I was hoping someone might be able to help me with this.  I'm running on a GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 motherboard which has 7 native SATA ports.  I wanted to increase the number of drives I am running and also wanted to take advantage of the unused resources my machine was not using.  I can load ESXi and log in via the vSphere Client or SSH in.  For goofs I loaded all my data sotres in successfully and even uploaded WIndows server 2008 R2 without the Supermicro card installed.  Once I felt comfortable with how the process worked, I installed the card, configured the main board and card BIOS and re-installed ESXi.  However, when I went to add the Datastores, the client software could not see the drives.  I've been over and over the BIOS setting s and cannot see anything wrong. Can anyone help me get this mother up and running?  Thank you.   

I am also having the same issue

There are some compatibility issues with ESXi and the SASLP-MV8. A hack is required to get them to pass through to a VM. If I had to take a guess I would guess this might have something to do with not being able to use disks connected to it as datastores.

I am not trying to get the VM's to see them.  The ESXI server itself cannot see the drives so I cant even create the Datashares

I am not trying to get the VM's to see them.  The ESXI server itself cannot see the drives so I cant even create the Datashares

 

 

Re-read what I wrote. I said because there are issues passing this card through there may be an issue with it in ESXi itself, and that may be what is preventing you from seeing drives connected to it.

The card is not supported by ESXi, there are no drivers for it.  You can look it up on the VMware Hardware Compatibily List.  It will work fine in passthrough mode but you will not be able to see the drivers within ESXi unless you figure out how to install custom drivers.